Keys, a pockets, a crumpled-up receipt is what most individuals carry of their again pocket however Sofia Elias carries a well-used, spine-broken sketchbook. For the Mexican designer and multidisciplinary artist, this little ‘pocketbook’ as she refers to it, is a report of inspiration, references, supplies and concepts that each one feed into her hungry creativeness.
Elias, who is predicated in Mexico Metropolis, advised Wallpaper*, ‘I realise now that once I’m within the studio, even when I don’t see it instantly, all my initiatives join with one another. Quite a lot of the designing has been about taking part in with my arms, understanding totally different supplies, exploring how they work together, and the way this informs the “use” of every piece. My doodles and scribbles act because the blueprints for my designs.’
Her playful nature and willingness to strive – and generally fail – with experimenting has led her to create a vibrant portfolio throughout jewelry, park sculptures and furnishings, every presenting a brand new wave of potentialities in kind, scale, and supplies, and performance.
Get to know Sofia Elias
(Picture credit score: Courtesy of Sofia Elias)
Elias began out on the earth of structure, having studied at Anahuac College in Mexico Metropolis. Feeling constrained by the extra linear syllabus, it was in her fifth yr of research that she offered a sculptural park titled ‘Jugando a Jugar’, which interprets to ‘taking part in to play’, impressed by kids’s play areas and the innocence of unplanned motion, response and interplay.
These rules have performed an essential position in Elias’s design course of ever since. She says, ‘I wish to assume that as youngsters, we have been the purest variations of ourselves; at all times curious, with no boundaries, and with out management. My designs attempt to reawaken these emotions. As adults, we regularly fake to have every little thing beneath management. My mission is to interrupt that, and it normally works; I virtually at all times get a giggle out of the person.’
(Picture credit score: Courtesy of Sofia Elias)
In her studio, situated within the Roma Norte neighbourhood within the Mexican capital, she began taking part in round with smaller scale sculptures, and in 2019 launched her jewelry model ‘Blobb’. ‘I by no means noticed myself making jewelry; to at the present time, I truly assume I don’t know something about jewelry,’ Elias stated. Every ring is sculpted by hand, and and not using a mould, that means every design is exclusive.
Blobb miniature ring sculptures
(Picture credit score: Courtesy of Sofia Elias)
Her first chair collection titled ‘Social gathering of Three’ had a extra sensible origin story. ‘I had simply moved studios and didn’t have any chairs that “labored”, all of them have been ones you’d fall on to, or they might collapse. I didn’t wish to purchase chairs once I knew, if I pushed myself, I may simply make some.’
(Picture credit score: Courtesy of Sofia Elias)
Though practicality is usually crucial, it’s the tangible expertise which informs Elias’ designs with a want to ‘provoke a sense of wanting to the touch the fabric and determine what it’s’.
That is precisely what her ‘Pofi’ chairs ship. The squashy, collapsible chair gives a number of potentialities with ‘no proper means to make use of it’. Reflecting on the design course of she stated: ‘ I actually needed to have an interactive strategy to them. You fall once you sit, and once you stand, it stands again up with you. The operate of them is to have “no operate,” and these are my favorite items of all of them.’
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Supply: Wallpaper
